Help:Link color

This page is for technical help on coloring links in articles, for technical help on color use in articles in general, see Help:Using colors. For the MOS guideline on color use in articles, see . For color tables and a color pallette, see . For the WikiProject, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Color. For the civility essay dealing with colors, see Wikipedia:Don't edit war over the color of templates.

In Wikipedia, the color of a link shows the status of the corresponding target page. The default colors (in the default skin Vector 2022) have the meanings shown in the table below. See also Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Colors.

Standard colors

Template:Sticky headerTemplate:Mw-datatable

Standard link colors, in Vector 2022 and other skins

Link color	Type	Vector 2022		Other skins
		Color code	Color	Color code	Color
blue link (Vector 2022) blue link (other skins)	Link to a Wikipedia page that currently exists, but you never visited	#3366CC = rgb(51,102,204)		#0645AD = rgb(6,69,173)
purple link (Vector 2022) indigo link (other skins)	Link to a Wikipedia page that exists and that you have visited	#795CB2 = rgb(121,92,178)		#0B0080 = rgb(11,0,128)
red link (Vector 2022) red link (other skins)	Link to a Wikipedia page that does not currently exist, and you never visited	#BF3C2D = rgb(191,60,45)		#BA0000 = rgb(186,0,0)
light maroon link	Link to a Wikipedia page that does not currently exist, but that you have visited	#A55858 = rgb(165,88,88)		#A55858 = rgb(165,88,88)
maroon link	Link to a very short article/stub within Wikipedia, but only if the user has set a preference option to format links to stubs in this way	not yet defined		#772233 = rgb(119,34,51)
blue link (Vector 2022) light blue link 1 (other skins) light blue link 2 (other skins)	Link to a page at another wiki, usually another Wikimedia project or an external link. Note that the light blue color is used whether or not the page actually exists at the target wiki. For example, there is an article about George Washington Carver here on the English Wikipedia, while there is no article of the same name on the Japanese Wikipedia; but they do have an article about the same man under a different title.	#3366CC = rgb(51,102,204)		#3366BB = rgb(51,102,187)
purple link (Vector 2022) purple link (other skins)	Link to a page on another site that has been visited	#795CB2 = rgb(121,92,178)		#663366 = rgb(102,51,102)

Note that the colors in the boxes may appear darker than text of the same color; also, larger or bold text will tend to look darker. Furthermore, the actual color seen by a user will vary slightly according to their operating system, desktop settings, and browser, as well as their monitor and for low-end LCDs, viewing angle. Logged-in users can also change the colors they see by selecting a different skin or using custom CSS.

Custom colors

To use named CSS colors for text on a white background, refer to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility/CSS colors for text on white for recommended colors.

Normal text

For normal text, the Template:Tl template with two parameters can be used: the color, either by name or hex code, and some text. However, prose text intended for readers should never be manually colored. ()

• Template:Tlc → Hello, world!
• Template:Tlc → Hello, world!

Links

Refrain from implementing colored links that may impede user ability to distinguish links from regular text, or color links for purely aesthetic reasons. ()

Styling individual links on a page

You can set the color of an individual link or set of links on a page (rather than a global change to the style of all links on Wikipedia) as follows. Setting styles in this way will apply to everyone who views those particular links or that particular page, not just you. However, links intended for readers should never be manually colored. ()

The Template:Tl template takes two parameters to function: the color of the link, the article being linked to, with an optional third parameter for alternative text to display as a piped link.

• Template:Tlc → Canada
• Template:Tlc → Alternative text

Or

You can turn links a different color like so:

Markup	*[[example|<span style="color:Orange;">This page exists.</span>]] *[[exampl|<span style="color:green;">This page does not exist.</span>]]
Renders as	This page exists. This page does not exist.

Or, if you desire existence checking, you can try:

Markup	*[[example|{{#ifexist: example|<span style="color:Orange;">This page exists.</span>|This page does not exist.}}]] *[[exampl|{{#ifexist: exampl|<span style="color:green;">This page exists.</span>|This page does not exist.}}]]
Renders as	This page exists. This page does not exist.

External links

A similar styled span can be added within an external link:

Markup	*[http://example.com <span style="color:green;">Example external link</span>]
Renders as	Example external link

Styling all links just for you

You can also customize link colors by editing the CSS at your skin subpage. This is a change which will apply to all links throughout the site, but will only be visible to you.

The standard link selectors are:

• a:link — defines the style for normal unvisited links
• a:visited — defines the style for visited links
• a:active — defines the style for active links; links become active once you click on them
• a:hover — defines the style for hovered links; links hover when the mouse moves over it

Colors are defined by hexadecimal characters: see web colors.

/* standard link colors */
.mw-body-content a:link { color: #0000FF; } /* normal unvisited links */
.mw-body-content a:link:visited { color: #0B0080; } /* visited links */
.mw-body-content a:link:active { color: #FF0000; } /* active links */
.mw-body-content a:link.new { color: #FF0000; } /* new links */
.mw-body-content a:link.extiw { color: #3366BB; } /* interwiki links */
.mw-body-content a:link.external { color: #3366BB; } /* external links */
.mw-body-content a:link.stub { color: #772233; } /* hovered links */

.mw-body-content a:link {color: #FF0000}
.mw-body-content a:visited {color: #00FF00}
.mw-body-content a:hover {color: #FF00FF}
.mw-body-content a:active {color: #0000FF}

Notes:

• a:hover must come after a:link and a:visited
• a:active must come after a:hover
• you need to have ".mw-body-content" in front of the standard link definition, because otherwise the default definition on this website will still take precedence over what you have defined.

Redirect

Show redirects as green links:

.mw-body-content a.mw-redirect {color:#308050}
.mw-body-content a.mw-redirect:visited {color:#3070A0}

External

Show external links as green links:

.mw-body-content a.external {color: #008000}
.mw-body-content a.external:visited {color: #008000}

Text decoration

This allows formatting such as underlines. For example:

.mw-body-content a:link {color: #000000; text-decoration: underline; }

Possible values are:

• none
• underline
• overline
• line-through

Font family

This will change the link font:

.mw-body-content a:link {font-family: monospace}

Preferences

The "display links to disambiguation pages in orange" feature, located in the gadgets tab of the preferences menu (under the "appearance" section), shows you all links to disambiguation pages in orange.

Scripts

User:Anomie/linkclassifier is a popular script that customizes colors to indicate links such as pages to be deleted, nonfree-media, redirects, protected pages and more.

See also

File:Symbol question.svg Help desk

• Template:Tl
• Template:Tl
• Template:Tl – allows setting both text and background color
• Template:Tl – colored table header cell
• Template:Tl
• Tools are available to help check whether the color contrast is sufficient, see Help:COLORTOOLS.